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Dynamics 365 Case Study - Implementation of Dynamics 365/CRM
CFR

Industry

Nonprofit

Customer Profile

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries.

Customer Situation

CFR wanted to revamp its legacy IT system which was being utilized for managing its member & non-member contacts and company information.

The legacy application used for managing these contacts was not fully integrated with its other internal systems, resulting in:

  • Data duplication within and between applications
  • Collaboration inefficiencies between different departments of CFR
  • Lack of system to organize and conduct events.
  • Inaccurate member and non-member data.
  • Inefficiencies in the business process management.
  • Lack of browser based web apps resulted in app deployment and maintenance bottlenecks

Tools Used

  • Scribe
  • SilverPop Connector
  • Custom Built Integration Tools

 

Considering Congruent’s profound domain & product knowledge, CFR selected Congruent as its partner to implement Microsoft Dynamics 365 / CRM

 

Congruent’s Solution

Congruent implemented D365 / CRM as an enterprise level application system with different business areas covered under one solution through seamless integration between different departments. The implementation covered business critical areas such as,

  • Management of member profiles, membership programs and benefits.
  • Effectively organizing and conducting events (Both member and outside events)
  • Automating the revenue generation department which frequently run campaigns for donations.
  • Membership enrollment and selection process
  • Foreign Affairs department who frequently publish article and magazine on foreign relations.

Congruent had also built a custom module - Event Management in D365 using XRM framework to manage the CFR events. The custom module helps CFR to manage the entire life cycle of event which includes organizing the events, allocating resources, inviting members, registering participants, conducting events, tracking attendance, and tracking resource consumption & cost.

Scope of this implementation involved requirement gathering, analysis, design, installation & configuration, customization, Advanced SDK/XRM Development, data migration and integration.

The major IT revamp included integrating D365/CRM with various systems, such as:

  • NAV/Serenic – Customers & Invoices were integrated with NAV to track invoice and payments for outside events, donation and contribution. Integration Tool Used – Scribe
  • SilverPop – Integrated SilverPop to send events invitations (emails) directly from D365. Integration Tool Used – D365 – SilverPop connector
  • Merlinone – Storing digital assets of events in Merlinone which is an online digital assets management system. Integration Tool Used – Custom built connector
  • Sailthru – Sailtrhru was used as ESP to send CFR’s article and publications. Integration Tool Used – Custom built connector
  • Membership Portal – Integrated D365 with CFR’s company portal to automate member registration for event through company’s website. Integration Tool Used – Custom built connector
  • SharePoint Portal – Integrated D365 with SharePoint to store artifacts/documents in SharePoint. Integration Tool Used – SharePoint D365 Connector
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